What is Sextortion? All you need to know to beware from becoming a victim

FPJ Web Desk:  The cyber fraudsters have turned to sextortion-- a practice of extorting money or sexual favours from someone by threatening to reveal evidence

of their sexual activity. The new difference that has been observed in these disturbing trends is that the women are now behind cameras, and not the male cyber fraudsters who hold a mobile with a woman's recording on. Police, however, claim that only around 0.1 percent of sextortion crimes are reported due to social stigma.

Maharashtra Cyber on launched online campaign against sextortion as series of cases of sextortion has emerged to be one of the most reported ones.

What is Sextortion?

Sexual extortion, also called ‘sextortion’, is a kind of blackmail. The perpetrator demands sexual favours, money, or other benefits under the threat of sharing intimate or sexually explicit material.

With the popularity of social media, messaging apps, and online dating, the exchange of explicit material online is far more commonplace. Plus, webcams make it very simple for people to record themselves (or be secretly recorded).

Typically, the perpetrator has (or purports to have) some compromising images or videos or the victim. They threaten to publish them online or share them with friends, family members, or colleagues if the victim doesn’t provide more material, engage in sexual acts, or hand over money. And these threats are far from idle.

Who are the victims?

-According to MahaCyber, 71 percent of case involve only victims under the age of 18 years.

-14 percent involve a mix of minor and adult victims.

-12 percent of cases involve only adult victims.

Methods of Sextortion

- Email phishing schemes

-Social media

-Hacked accounts

-Hacked webcames

What to do if you are the victim of sexual extortion?

Don’t panic. Remember that it is not your fault, and you are not alone.

Tell someone you trust so that they can support you in getting help.

Stop communicating with the perpetrator.

Don’t give in to their threats by sending money or more intimate content.

Keep the evidence of their blackmail and threats on your device.

Contact or report the crime at https://www.cybercrime.gov.in/

SEXTORTION FRAUDS

These types of frauds can take place both against male and female victims (although majority of the victims are primarily females) and the perpetrator can be both an unknown person or a known one. In such crimes, the culprit usually entices and induces the victim to share their private and nude photographs or videos over phone, which are then stored and saved by the former for future extortion (sextortion).

In a lot of cases, people come in contact with unknown persons through dating apps or even matrimonial websites/apps. The profiles that they connect with, are mostly fake. The person behind the profile is actually a criminal whose main motive is to extort money from the victim. These fake profiles are deliberately made to look very attractive so that people fall prey to this scam easily. The persons who operate these fake profiles first talk to the victims normally for a few days and then induces them to share their intimate/nude pictures and videos with them. Once the criminal has access to these private pictures and/or videos, he starts extorting the sender for money, sometimes up to several lakhs claiming that in case the victim does not pay up, he will upload their pictures/videos on the internet or share those with his/her relatives, family and friends.

In a new variant of this Modus Operandi, a lot of people (mostly men) are being contacted on Instagram recently by women with attractive profiles, who immediately ask them for a sex chat or a nude video call. When the person agrees to it, they record the entire episode and start blackmailing/extorting the victim for money threatening to share the video with his relatives and friends.

This crime can also be committed by someone known to the victim and with whom the victim has had an intimate relationship. Sometimes, such people get access to or clandestinely obtain private pictures/videos of the victim and then, when the relationship ends, they use it to extort money from the victim.

Safety Precautions:

1. Please remember – the internet never forgets or forgives. If you have shared something once, it will remain present on the Net forever, in one form or the other.

2. Secondly, the reach and speed of the internet is enormous. In a short span of time, the offensive content can spread to millions of people. Therefore, it is very important that under no circumstances, nothing that could, if leaked into the public domain, cause harm or embarrassment at a later stage, should be posted, shared, transmitted, recorded, etc.

3. During an online interaction or chat, if the person on the other side is trying to rush through the things and develop intimacy, then it is cause of alarm.

4. Never allow anyone, howsoever close that person may be, to capture any private part or intimate activity with any device. Such a data can be misused at a later stage causing serious harm or damage to reputation to the victim.

(Source: ybercelldelhi.in/Sextortion.html)